Levittown On The Web

Some kids fixate on toy cars or trucks or guns. When David Bohnett, founder of the surprise smash-hit Website GeoCities www.geocities.com) was a little boy, his obsession was the telephone. "I still think phones are the coolest," he says. He remembers when touch-tone phones first came to Hinsdale, Ill., his hometown. "I told my parents I'd give up my allowance if they got one," he says.

Bohnett's phone-mania is the Rosebud that explains why GeoCities has grown into the biggest (dare I use the word?) community on the Web. He understands that community is mostly about communicating--and he figured...